Are there any things that children do better than adults?
It's been hard to nail down what kids do better. If you pick up a developmental psychology journal at random, you're likely to find an article on some interesting psychological task, and you'll find that adults are better than older kids, and older kids are better than younger kids. Most things, adults are better at. That's one reason I think learning at any age has to do with motivation and time devoted to tasks. Kids are better at acquiring language than adults but we don't really have a good explanation for why.
Any ideas?
The one place kids seem to be at an advantage is low-level acoustic phenomena. That may be one reason they're better at accents and cultivating perfect pitch
That seems to be a fairly circumscribed set of things.
I think that's right. I think the former paradigm was that you really had to learn a skill early. And it's still probably better to learn it early. But you don't have to give up hope if you want to continue learning
What in the neuroscience literature demonstrates this plasticity?
Some of best studies are by Eric Knudsen at Stanford. He showed adult barn owls could do similar things as young owls if they learned them incrementally. Another study showed that the older owls could do just as well in a real-world context if there were predators around. The way I interpret these studies is that incentive and motivation are critical.
Are there a set of recommendations you could give to adults who want to take up an instrument?
Take it slow, give yourself space. Don't expect success overnight and invest a lot of time. People expect kids to take a long time but they sort of want adults to be done right away. Adults pick up a guitar and want to play their favorite song right away, and kids are more accepting that "I'm just playing these three notes today."
Do you think there's a role for new technologies like transcranial magnetic stimulation that may allow us to turn off interfering mental processes in the brain that prevent learning?
As we better understand the dynamics of memory we may be able to overcome some of the problem interferences place on learning new things—and that might come pharmacologically or using techniques like brain stimulation.
What were your original goals when you started to play guitar, and did you proceed further than expected?
My original goal was just be able to play at all. And then to make music for myself. I've succeeded more than I imagined, and it brings me enormous pleasure.
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Add CommentI refuse to believe in 'talent' it's a wooly concept that collectively describes the results of being motivated enough to put in the work required to be skillful.The lazy don't comprehend dedication to an art form, so they bleat about talent The preamble to the article suggests that Marcus, after years of possessing little or no instrumental ability, suddenly acquires a noticeable level of skill... but by whose judgement? Nothing to be learned here...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisho hum, slow day in the land of science journalism ...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople's brains may remain plastic and capable of learning, but apparently some people's minds are not. I wonder what causes the switch to be turned off.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTalent isn't so much a wooly concept as it is a confluence of abilities which ARE probably genetically determined. For one thing, intelligences -- both the test-measured kind & all the others -- vary by person. One person may grasp a concept; another may struggle. One person may synthesize ideas; another may remain in an unvarying mental groove. Not to mention that one person's mind may find certain pursuits appealing & others not so much so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, of course, application makes a difference. I learned to play tennis in my late twenties; I loved it. I practiced like crazy, by myself or with anyone who would deign to play with me. I took lessons. I played for 4-6 hours every day. And within 3 years, I became a reasonably skilled club player; but I never had the killer instinct or the desire to win that takes players to the top. Not only that, but I saw another friend, of about the same age, pick up a racket & play with some skill from the moment she began. She didn't have to teach herself to keep her eye on the ball & she was naturally athletic.
There IS such a thing as talent, though of what it is comprised varies from skill to skill. I could play the violin for 20 years & never sound as ineffably sweet as Nigel Kennedy. I could paint for 10,000 hours & never be Renoir or Van Gogh or Picaso or Kandinsky. And I could graduate summa cum laude from Harvard Business School with an MBA & I'd never be a top CEO (I'd rather poke needles in my eyes!).
Application is not ALL it takes.
Love your statement. Can I add it to my Facebook page? I think people conform to life and give up the wonder they once had in learning new things. Life being bills, bills, and more bills taking their time and wonderment with life away.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are welcome to use it. Thanks for the compliment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps you are right. Maybe it is the difficulties of daily life that turn us off to the possibilities of the new.
I am a professional cellist. In addition to playing in a symphony orchestra, I teach private cello lessons. I have seen a range of combinations of talent and application in children, and it does take both to reach a high level. To some extent, lack of application can be made up for later, but lack of one or more crucial talents (and what exactly those are is a subject for a long conversation) almost certainly create a firm limit on a person's potential.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have also worked with adult amateurs, and I consider it astronomically unlikely that someone could start studying violin at 50 and become a "concert violinist," if by that you mean a high level professional performer. I have worked with students of this type, although admittedly not a large sample, including a few who really practice diligently over many years and who possess a driving passion. The requirement for extremely fine levels of motor skills, coordination, and dexterity -- all certainly aspects of talent but also things that must be cultivated -- and the optimized neuromuscular aspects of playing an instrument seem excrutiatingly harder for adults to acquire. Even adults who played the instrument in youth and stopped for a time during young adulthood find it painfully hard to regain the refinement and reflexes required to play at a level as high as their understanding and discernment. Sometimes this seems like an example of the adage that youth is often wasted on the young.
Talent is a strange facet of playing ability. I was a quite competent lead trumpet player, less competent in a classical setting. In college, I didn't want to play in the marching band so switched my major (instrument) to piano. Despite many, many hours of practice, my forte on piano was only in playing scales. I never progressed to even a minor skill in sight reading as I always seemed to have a disconnect between what I saw and the impulses to the hands to perform what I saw and could hum. I had to be the absolute worst piano major the school ever had and I did devote hours a day to practice. My talent seemed to lie in the single dimension of an instrument offering one note at a time. I have, at times, gigged on different brasses, flute, bass (upright), drums and (even, in a pinch) piano. I have a working knowledge of woodwinds and strings but have no proficiency in their performance (though I was making some progress with a few months of cello lessons which I loved but did not continue). I occasionally go to the keyboard but have lost almost all the few skills I once had. I have had friends who could not seem to acquire the skills to perform adequately on brasses or reeds despite hours of practice but could perform difficult piano sonatas or etudes with ease after a modest amount of time working out the fingerings and expression.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is nothing new in this story - It's been done before in Never Too Late: My Musical Life Story - written by John Caldwell Holt in the Seventies. "If I could learn to play the cello well, as I thought I could, I could show by my own example that we all have greater powers than we think; that whatever we want to learn or learn to do, we probably can learn; that our lives and our possibilities are not determined and fixed by what happened to us when we were little, or by what experts say we can or cannot do."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was 55 when I started teaching myself how to play drums. I am 57 1/2 and now write and play originals only in the style of Dream Theater, Tool, Rush mostly. It is weird to feel how my perception of music has changed, it is also weird how I feel my limbs as if they are acting on their own accord, like a different person but I know it is me doing it because my limbs play what I want them to play, but still, it feels very weird to say the least. BTW, I was "clocked" on the top 2% on IQ tests when I was younger, don't know if that has something to do with my ability to learn and master new things now that I am older. I am also an "impulsive learner", meaning anything will attract my attention, and there I am hitting the books on the subject. I think there is no limit to the brains ability to learn and master new things at "old" age, or at least I refuse to think otherwise. LOL
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